Earlier today, USL announced that it will extend the 2019 regular season to 33 weeks. Jake Edwards, USL President, explained that the change will “…allow the league’s clubs more opportunity for Saturday night home games”, which he credited for the impressive attendance figures this season.

It has long been accepted that games played on weekends outdraw those played on a weekday. But is this assumption correct, and, if so, how significant is the effect?

To seek answers to these questions, I have collated the 2018 USL attendance figures for all 33 clubs through July 31. I’ve classified all games played on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as “Weekend”, and all games played Monday through Thursday as “Weekday”.

To start, let’s look at these 2 groups. In total, there have been 259 games played on weekends so far this season, drawing an average attendance of 5,091. By contrast, there have only been 67 games played on a weekday, with an average crowd of 4,059.

This suggests that weekend games attract on average 25.4% more fans than games played on a weekday, thereby justifying USL’s decision today. However, that’s a flawed conclusion, as some of the individual matches which make up these figures are unrepresentative.

How are they unrepresentative? Let’s take the example of a team’s home opener: after a long offseason, fans will be more eager than normal to see their team take the field, which in turn will lead to bigger crowds. This effect can be seen in the USL data. In fact, a USL club’s opening home fixture this year is on average 25% higher than other weekend games through July 31. To include these opening day numbers will bias the results. It doesn’t give us any indication about a team’s appeal on any other Friday, Saturday or Sunday this season.

The same principle applies to games held on July 4, which this year fell on a Wednesday. Four USL teams hosted a game on Independence Day, and they all enjoyed an increase in fans.  This again will be an outlier compared to any other weekday game.

I have also excluded 3 other fixtures from the analysis. One was Real Monarch’s first game at their new Zions Bank Stadium. The other 2 were hosted by Ottawa Fury and Toronto FC II, who both bussed in schoolkids for a Wednesday daytime game. I think it’s safe to say that the 4,100 kids who witnessed Toronto take on Penn FC bear little resemblance to the 50 people who went to their previous weekday game against North Carolina.

Excluding opening day, July 4, and the 3 games identified above from the analysis, we now have a league average of 4,919 fans at weekend games, compared to 3,745 at weekday games.

However, even these revised averages fail to offer a truly fair comparison, because some clubs have played significantly more weekday games than others, thereby exerting a greater influence on the numbers. To overcome this problem, let’s look at specific averages for individual clubs, rather than the average for both USL conferences as a whole.

Discounting the unrepresentative games, 15 USL teams have played at least 2 weekday games to date.  This has been chosen as a minimum in part to reduce influencing factors such as the attractiveness of opposition or the weather. (Rising, having played only one weekday home game to date, is therefore excluded from these club-specific comparisons).

Only 3 of these 15 clubs recorded higher attendances for a weekday game.  These are Portland Timbers 2, Real Monarchs and Swope Park Rangers (whose average attendance differs by only 1 between weekend and weekday games). An interesting point to note here is that all 3 clubs are owned by MLS sides.  Perhaps weekday games are more convenient for their parent club’s fans, as they are less likely to clash with first team matches.

The 12 other clubs all experienced lower crowds at games held on a weekday.  The worst hit sides were Atlanta 2 (who saw a drop-off of 45.1%) and Penn FC (48.5% drop-off).

There are some limitations with this analysis, including the sample size; but the data seems to suggest that weekend games attract bigger crowds than weekday games.  For the 15 clubs individually examined, the collective average drop-off was 12.6%.

Today’s USL decision, then, looks like it could be a weekend winner.